I generally stay away from repairing rust but this customer insisted this box be repaired. This box had the normal rust on the top rail with holes. We got creative and shaved the seam/body line. i sandblasted the rust and sunk the holes and filled the entire seam with All-metal thick. This created a thick barrier in which i feel the rust should not come through for years. the problem is in the sun the fillers seam to be swelling not sand scratches or shrinking but causing the body work to look rough when it is in the sun for a bit (the truck is black). When it cools it seams to relax. Ive been in the collision and autobody industry for 15 years and never seen this happen. many many hours went into this truck putting a show car finish on to it. i haven't delivered it to the customer yet and fear he will see this and want answers. my question is will this continue to happen? how is this avoided? And does any one think the filler will fail (not from rust but from thick filler)?

Len

05-12-2011, 10:55 AM

What is the situation under the filler? Sometimes overlapping the metal can cause it to expand and contract differently at the seam and create a "read-thru" line when the metal expands and contracts. Also the application of a thick layer of filler can expand and contract differently than the surrounding sheet metal. Check out the rust repair procedure linked to the picture below, we used All-Metal on that repair and the seam didn't create any read-thru problems. Black is more challenging because you can see every little distortion and it gets hotter than most other colors when hit by the sun.